Statement

---

I am a Canadian artist based in Ottawa with a primary focus on painting, engaging in investigative drawing and photography as complementary processes. I studied visual arts at Ottawa School of Art (OSA), Algonquin College and York University at different points in my life. I am currently a member of the Enriched Bread Artists of Ottawa collective. Inspired by exploring transformative experiences, universal to the human condition, threads of vulnerability, resilience, and transformation run through abstract works. Exploration of these concepts follows both the track of the personal and the track of the universal. 

I am curious about human nature, the unconscious and the physiological and psychological aspects of memory. I reflect on life altering memories with interest in the connection between mind, body and identity exploring how they reveal themselves as disruptors and impact our being. 

Works in my recent series Bound to Unravel were created during the various phases of the pandemic including periods of isolation, uncertainty, reflection, and hope. Bound to Unravel captures for me the oscillation between states of anxiety and optimism, empathy and gratitude, constraint, and emergence. 

Paintings are produced intuitively through abstract mark-making and incidental action creating ambiguous biomorphic shapes and calligraphic lines alluding to body and the memory of an action. Imagined spaces are evoked through relationships of colour, form, gesture, and enigmatic references to the familiar. Saturated colour, animated forms and an action filled process contribute to dynamic movement and drama in the work. Alternating between spontaneous gesture and controlled line reflects a metaphorical tension and precarious balance between destabilizing and containing. 

Patricia Kenny